Making Tracks 2021 - The Sanctuary, Walthamstow, London

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 174, January/February 2022.



Making Tracks 2021
The Sanctuary, Walthamstow, London
11th November 2021

After the success of 2019 and a virtual version in 2020, this was the second in-person edition of Making Tracks' fellowship programme. Eight up-and-coming young European-based musicians got together for a two-week incubation residency on the west coast of Scotland, before setting off on a two-week UK tour. It all culminated in this concert in a cosy church in Walthamstow.

This year’s Making Tracks fellows were Ahmet Ozan Baysal (Turkey; bağlama, voice), Robert Bisha (Albania; piano, çifteli, voice), Iona Fyfe (Scotland; voice), Liz Hanks (England; cello); Simon Leleux (Belgium; doholla, daf), Pheobe riley Law (England; sound art), Thamires Tannous (Brazil; guitar, voice), Azin Zahedi (Iran; santur, flute). Their set alternated between solo spots highlighting each musician’s own work, and collaborations in duo, trio and quartet arrangements devised during their month-long adventure.

Mashing together intercultural ideas and distinct musical vocabularies can often end badly, but the sensitivity and relationships of these musicians – as well as their obvious musical mastery – meant that each collaboration was full of intrigue and beauty. Particularly inspired combinations included Fyfe and Bisha’s jazzy take on Hamish Henderson’s 'The Flyting of Life and Death' (with flavours of Tigran Hamasyan), and Tannous, Zahedi and Hanks performing an as-yet-untitled new composition.

Making Tracks has really special spark, making disparate artists comfortable enough to explore in ways they wouldn’t have thought possible. Keep these artists on your radar - and if you weren’t lucky enough catch it this time around, look out for the live album coming in 2022.


Photo: A bunch of Making Tracks fellows tuck in overlooking Loch Long in west Scotland, by Merlyn Driver.

Tonga Boys feat. Doctor Kanuska Group - Umoyo wa Muthempire (Live in the Temple)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 174, January/February 2022.

Tonga Boys feat. Doctor Kanuska Group
Umoyo wa Muthempire (Live in the Temple)
1000HZ Records (50 mins)

For those in the Malawian countryside, the Tonga Boys from Mzuzu are a band from the big city and the group’s arrival to perform at Doctor Kanuska’s traditional temple caused a stir. There, the urban DIY sounds of the Tonga Boys met the singers and dancers of the temple’s congregation for a night of deep vimbuza (spirit possession healing music) mixed in with malipenga (military music from the Tonga Boy’s homeland of Nkhata Bay) and even a couple of stripped-back dancehall numbers.

There are real field recording vibes from this album. The way the sound bounces around the room, the gentle bubble of chatter and the excited electricity of this one-of-a-kind performance all strongly evoke a sense of place. It feels like you’re there and the intensity of the event is palpable.

In the temple, the music was all voice and percussion, but Polish producer Piotr Dang Cichocki adds an extra layer. The production elements – synthed bass and drums, samples – are surprisingly subtle for the size of their sound, often blending seamlessly into the percussion density and adding a complementary boom to the ngoma drums to ensure those transcendental chest cavity reverberations.

This is a unique mix of urban-rural, folk-dance-religious-party music with an acid twang. To be there live must have been unforgettable; this album is the next best thing.

Ebo Krdum - Diversity

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 174, January/February 2022.

Ebo Krdum
Diversity
Supertraditional (55 mins)

Diversity is a theme in Ebo Krdum’s life. Growing up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan, his family and friends spoke many languages between them, and the radio played music from all over West, North and East Africa. He now lives in Sweden, having fled war and political upheaval 11 years ago.

In his debut album, the self-styled ‘African blues’ guitarist and singer explores his own personal meaning of diversity – ‘peace and harmony among people despite their differences’ – using eight languages across the 12 tracks to sing about unity, justice, organisation, activism and the fight for peace. Diversity also means that Krdum isn’t fixed to one particular style. There are different influences dotted throughout: some Arabic, some reggae, and a pleasant thread of Scandinvanian folk, courtesy of performance and production from Swedish folk legends including Ale and Anna Möller. There’s also more than a hint of Krdum’s first and largest influence, Ali Farka Touré – in fact, the track ‘Aysé Konga’, appears to be a take on Touré’s classic ‘Ai Du’. Elsewhere, balafon, djembe, calabash and Tuareg-like guitar add more tones and textures that give the album a decidedly West African bent.

With Diversity, Krdum has made a solid debut album, and one that lives up to its title in terms of music, lyrics and philosophy.

Shri Vijaya Vittala: The Musical Pillars of a Medieval Indian Temple

First published on the British Library Sound and Vision blog.



The Shri Vijaya Vittala Temple sits among the breath-taking and sprawling ruins of the ancient city of Hampi, in Karnataka, India. Dedicated to Vittala, a manifestation of the god Vishnu and his avatar Krishna, the temple began construction sometime in the 15th or 16th centuries but was never finished – the city was destroyed in 1565.

Each of the temple’s eight main pillars are surrounded by seven smaller pillars. When these small pillars are struck with the hand or a wooden beater, they ring in a clear, bell-like tone. Not only that, but each pillar in a set is tuned to a different note, meaning that together they sound a scale on which music can be performed.

To read the full blog post and to listen to the recording of the Vittala Temple's musical pillars, head over to the British Library Sound and Vision blog.


Photo: Some of the musical pillars of the Vittala Temple. Photo by Tom Vater’s travel companion Aroon Thaewchatturat.

Parvyn - Sa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 173, December 2021.

Parvyn
Sa
HopeStreet Recordings (39 mins)

Australian Punjabi singer Parvyn grew up among Sikh devotional music and trained in Hindustani classical music and dance. She began her career on stage with her father Dya Singh’s group, and moved on to be the lead singer of Melbourne’s psychedelic Bollywood big band The Bombay Royale. Now she strikes out on her own with a debut solo album.

Sa follows musical and lyrical ruminations on Parvyn’s past and future through mental health issues, parenthood and immigrant life, the music drawing from two main directions: Indian classical and jazz-angled R&B. Throughout the album, the proportions of these two influences shift one way and the other, but the music is always at its strongest when they balance each other out and Parvyn’s voice blends these two rather different vocal disciplines, such as on ‘Something 29’ and ‘Crossed the Line’. Aside from the intercultural vocal contortions, props also have to be given for some really satisfying production with meaty bass and restrained but effective use of synths and loops.

Sa is the first note of Indian sargam scale, and acts as the root, the beginning and the base: an appropriate name for a debut album that will hopefully stand as a sure footing for future work.

Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno - KWEChE

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 173, December 2021.

Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno
KWEChE
Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno (43 mins)

The nyatiti is an eight-stringed plucked lyre of the Luo people in Kenya. Played in a fast and rhythmic way, the nyatiti can provide a danceable groove; in fact, it’s one of the ancestors of benga music. Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno approaches the nyatiti in a different way.

Hailing from Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya and now based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Otieno plays the nyatiti in a much more introspective way, creating considered and atmospheric moods. On KWEChE, he maintains the instrument’s distinctive timbre, with its subtle buzz on each string, but the music it leads deals with weighty topics based on the cultural differences and adaptations so noticeable within a diaspora community.

For an album based around the nyatiti and Otieno’s high-pitched song, the best moments come when we’re given something a bit different. The track ‘Oyao Tich’, for example, with its lightly Celtic folk fiddle, ‘Buok’ with its Indian bansuri (flute) or the closer ‘Andiwo’ with its more upbeat feel and fresh, airy guitar, all buck the trend and are standout tracks as a result.

It’s great to hear the nyatiti in focus and KWEChE has its moments, but with notable exceptions, it seems to hit the same beats fairly often.

Aynur - WOMEX 21 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2021 delegate guide.



As both a Kurd and an Alevi, Aynur Doğan’s cultural heritage has always been subject to discriminatory laws and public persecution, whether in the small mountain town of Çemişgezek where she grew up, or the metropolis of Istanbul. With her music, however, singer and bağlama player Doğan – now usually known simply as Aynur – creates space for her identities and for those that share them.

At its core, Aynur’s music is based on Kurdish folk songs. Her voice – in turns bold and powerful or delicate, almost fragile – always holds the 300-year-old melodies in tender embrace. She carries these songs as a caretaker and a friend. She preserves the Kurdish and Alevi songs against those that would have them silenced, but at the same time, those songs give her the strength to continue as a commanding voice in support of those cultures.

Tradition doesn’t restrict Aynur’s music, though. Her own style blends the Anatolian and the Western, and collaborations with world-class musicians from many fields (including Yo-Yo Ma, Kayhan Kalhor, Mercan Dede and Javier Limón) have led to a passionate, international fanbase. Her accessible music allows her to spread her words far and wide.

Her popularity and outspoken nature have made Aynur the target of right-wing and anti-Kurd groups in Turkey. Her shows became marred by disruptions, leading her to move her base to Amsterdam in 2012. This has not dampened her fire: the most recent of her seven albums, 2020’s Hedûr, went to #1 on the world music charts and has led to a concert in Carnegie Hall (understandably postponed for now).

It is for her long-term dedication to the preservation and innovation of Kurdish and Alevi culture and for maintaining the highest artistic integrity even in the face of political pressure that Aynur is a very worthy recipient of the WOMEX 21 Artist Award.


Photo: Aynur receives the WOMEX 21 Artist Award, by Eric van Nieuwland.

Global Music Match - WOMEX 21 Professional Excellence Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2021 delegate guide.



The past year-and-a-half has been one of the most drastic and challenging periods of change in the history of the international music industry. Almost at once, and with very little warning, a world’s worth of live music disappeared, and musicians and audiences alike scrambled to find new ways of reaching each other without leaving their homes.

But adversity leads to innovation, and that’s where Global Music Match comes in. The heart of the premise is simple: folk- and roots-based musicians uplifting and promoting each other, mobilising each other’s audiences and creating new professional networks.

Each cycle of GMM takes place over twelve weeks. Teams are formed six artists, each from a different country or region, and each gets their own two-week spotlight across the whole team’s social media channels. These spotlights are a flurry of activity including interviews, live sets, unreleased material and exclusive – entirely digital – collaborations. After two editions, 172 artists and many thousands of fans have participated and benefitted from this mutual support network, with the help of music export offices from 17 countries and regions from around the world.

The exciting part of GMM is that it is not just a temporary quick-fix. It’s a new form of music export and cultural exchange, and one that is not necessarily anchored to the current situation. It is a real and effective way for artists to expand their audience in terms of numbers, as well as into new territories, opening up the possibility for new touring avenues post-pandemic.

For creating, at such short notice, a new and innovative platform that has already seen long-lasting and tangible benefits, and for being a source of optimism and comfort to musicians in a time of great struggle, we are delighted that Global Music Match will receive the WOMEX 21 Professional Excellence Award.


Photo: Just some of the hundreds of members of Global Music Match, by Eric van Nieuwland.

Introducing Dongyang Gozupa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.



At its best, the power trio is one of music’s most elegant and well-balanced ensembles. Each aspect of the trio leans on the others while pulling equal weight, filling the sonic space without any extraneous elements. Seoul-based Dongyang Gozupa are a perfect example – even if their set-up turns the standard power trio on its head.

Dongyang Gozupa are Jang Dohyuk on a personalised drum-and-percussion kit, Ham Minhwi on bass guitar and Yun Eunhwa on yanggeum, the Korean hammered zither. Importantly, the group doesn’t orbit around a singer. This removes the focal point of the listener’s attention, and serves to highlight the equal importance of each musician. Their full message is delivered through instrumental sound. “When one conveys an emotion, such as loneliness, joy, love, or even rage, there are times when one cannot express that emotion in a word or phrase,” they state. “Through our performances, we try to create an emotional narrative that connects with as many people as possible.”

While they paint with emotions, their musical style itself defies easy explanation. They don’t anchor their music around any particular genre, but draw from many streams. For Jang, genres aren’t the point: “Rather than wanting to create something that the world has never heard before, we just want to create something fun which incorporates the tastes and references of each band member.” This includes elements of prog-rock and gugak (traditional Korean music) with hints of metal and industrial, all tinged with the avant-garde, making a sound that can be dark and dissonant while retaining a certain playfulness: it avoids any over-seriousness and makes dancing inevitable.

It’s those spicy dissonances that give Dongyang Gozupa their signature sound. Those moments of discomfort are not something they shy away from, but rather embrace as a fundamental part of the sonic environment, a necessary tension to balance the consonance. “Personally, I don’t think that dissonance is something wrong,” says Ham. “This all-or-nothing, right-or-wrong thinking makes creative vision very narrow. It’s the same with dissonance. If a note does not fit in a particular place, repeating that note can create a special kind of psychedelic effect.” And that can take a piece to a different place entirely.

The group’s identity and philosophy can be seen in microcosm in Yun’s yanggeum; it is rooted in tradition without being bound to it. Her instrument was specially-made – it literally has her name on it: “I wanted to express myself with a yanggeum that was a little more spectacular and dynamic.” To that end, hers has many more strings than smaller gugak version, giving her access to a much wider range of both tone and style. Yun also plays with two sticks instead of the traditional one, and uses a variety of effects pedals to alter the sound when appropriate. Spectacular and dynamic – adjectives that extend to the whole group.

The past decade has seen a truly electrifying new wave of artists using Korean folk and classical music to discover new directions and meanings in sound – think Jambinai, Black String – and Dongyang Gozupa can surely claim their place among them: a perfectly-weighted power trio with an intricately balanced sound.


Photo: Yun Eunhwa, Jang Dohyuk and Ham Minhwi of Dongyang Gozupa.

Tommy Khosla - Vignettes

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.

Tommy Khosla
Vignettes
Vadi Records (40 mins)

Vignettes is a series a small windows into the life, history and identity of its creator, London-based sitar player and producer Tommy Khosla. It is an exploration on the themes of mixed heritage (Khosla has roots in India, France and the UK) and neurodiversity that is filled with equal parts nostalgia and curiosity.

Across a collage of 18 very short tracks, most drifting in at around the one- or two-minute mark, sitar leads the way through lo-fi hip-hop beats, synths that blur between ambient and chillwave, and cameos from instruments such as shakuhachi and cellotar, all played by Khosla themself. Melodies also drift by the way of Hindustani classical music and English folk (with echoes of Sheema Mukherjee with the Imagined Village on tracks such as ‘Flora’). The use of sitar in these contexts has the risk of coming across as very corny, but such pitfalls are avoided with Khosla’s obvious skill at their instrument and their adventurous composition.

It all feels deeply personal, inspired by Khosla’s grandparents’ slideshows of their travels in north India, and littered with frequent snippets of family reminiscences and field recordings. Vignettes has been three years in the making, and is an accomplished debut for Khosla, with an impressive vision and maturity that belies their 22 years.

Les Filles de Illighadad - At Pioneer Works

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.

Les Filles de Illighadad
At Pioneer Works
Sahel Sounds (46 mins)

Unique among the thriving Tuareg guitar band scene, three of the four members of Les Filles de Illighadad are women – hence their name – and they bring the traditional women’s tende music into play as well as the standard assouf style. After two successful albums on Sahel Sounds, their third is a live offering via the Brooklyn arts space Pioneer Works.

As for their sound, you know it, you love it: it's that Tuareg guitar groove! Les Filles are a small ensemble, with three electric guitars and calabash percussion; their lack of bass gives an unusual, but not unpleasant, soundscape that is expansive without feeling particularly dense. Their music is very self-assured – no effects on the clean electric guitars, no solos except those that develop naturally from the repeating patterns, and none of the bombast that characterises some other Tuareg rock groups. Once they hit the rhythm and the occasional brain-melting blues note, they don’t need fireworks because they have the whole force of the desert behind them, and the audience responds in turn.

At Pioneer Works is a solid set of superior grooves played with stylish confidence, even if it’s not necessarily the most exciting album you’ll ever hear.

Nabra & Ligeti Quartet - Sounds of Sudan

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.

Nabra & Ligeti Quartet
Sounds of Sudan
Nabra (38 mins)

Bristol-based oud players Ali Elmubarak and Knud Stüwe came together as Nabra in 2015 to explore a shared love of Sudanese music. The duo’s debut album sees them teaming up with the Ligeti string quartet to give a new twist to classic Sudanese pop.

Sudanese music is always a treat – inherently African and unmistakeably Arabic, full of pentatonic groove and dancing rhythms – and this set of seven folk-leaning pop songs from Sudan’s ‘golden era’ shows it well. The Ligeti Quartet’s strings bring a lightness that complements the earthy ouds and add a distinct classical flavour while maintaining the playful nature of the songs.

The string arrangements are clearly – and admittedly – inspired by the Kronos Quartet, and are most effective during the more poetic and lyrical pieces, where their parts can swell and swirl around the melodies of Elmubarak’s voice. When the pieces skew towards the dancier side of things, however, the quartet can struggle a little to find space among the rhythm. Strings are great for subtlety and emotion but sometimes what you really need is the nice, heavy boom of the sadly absent tar (frame drum).

Sounds of Sudan is a solid debut and interesting collaboration – definitely one to keep on your radar.

Batch Gueye - Moytou

A version of this review was first published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.

Batch Gueye
Moytou
Batch Gueye (44 mins)

It’s a bad portent for an album when, about 12 seconds into the first song, there’s a clear and audible ‘watermark’ for a beat-making website, indicating the use of unlicensed beats on the track. But that’s how Moytou starts. Even leaving aside questions of legality, using someone’s musical work like that without licensing, permission or even a credit is so unethical, unprofessional and – for the listener – deeply weird. It definitely leaves a sour taste, but let’s listen to the rest… it doesn’t get much better, really.

UK-based Senegalese dancer-turned-singer Batch Gueye had a very promising first album, Ndiarigne, back in 2015, and has been a key element of the forward-thinking Afro-futurist jazz group Fofoulah. His solo work has gone downhill since then, though, and Moytou feels like a shadow of what he is capable of. Where that first album managed to alternate between hard-hitting and raw, and delicate and emotional, here, the moods seem to have smoothed out into a middle-of-the-road mbalax-lite.

Gueye is at his best when he surrounds his soulful, high-pitched Wolof vocals around the polyrhythms of sabar and tama drums and guitars, but too often here he falls back on an over-reliance on uninteresting synths, pads and beats. There are some good ideas and impressive singing, but the whole thing is poorly executed, uninspiring and lacking in the fun energy that should be coursing through it all. The track ‘Waye Wi’ stands out as a high point, and gives a glimpse at the quality that could reasonably be expected throughout.

Moytou is a missed opportunity from Gueye – some shining moments amid a generally disappointing album with little to set it apart from the crowd… not to mention some dodgy artistic ethics. Bring the old Batch back!

Ustad Saami - East Pakistan Sky

First published on The Quietus.

Ustad Saami
East Pakistan Sky
Glitterbeat Records (36 mins)

Naseeruddin Saami is a master – an ustad – of khayal, a highly-ornamented style of Hindustani classical music. His delicate voice and intricate command of a centuries-old tradition is capable of casting spells. Saami’s style is unique. His personal system divides each octave into forty-nine surti (microtones). For comparison, European music theory divides the octave into twelve, and Hindustani theory has mostly agreed on twenty-two. The core melodic elements of each piece – the raag – only use seven notes, Saami’s forty-nine surti gives him many times more options to inject the slightest nuance into every syllable, introducing changes so small that the conscious brain may not register them, but that are instead felt in the emotions of the listener. Now seventy-seven years old, Saami is still considered the only master of this surti system.

Read the full review over at The Quietus.

My Instrument: Aga Ujma and her Sasando

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 171, October 2021.



The sasando is a rare instrument. It hails from the small Indonesian island of Rote, but it’s little-heard within Indonesia, and almost entirely unknown internationally. Although it looks a little like a short, squat harp, the sasando is a tube zither, its strings arranged in a full circle around a thick bamboo stem. In fact, it’s remarkably similar in sight and sound to its not-so-distant Austronesian cousin, the valiha from Madagascar.

The sasando’s most striking feature, however – and what sets it apart from its relatives – is the giant sail that is attached to both ends of its body, giving it a distinctly maritime feel. This sail is made from the leaves of the lontar palm, and serves the function of a soundbox – the space between the parabolic sail and the strings amplifies the sound, as well as bouncing it back to the musician (very useful when some of the strings are not visible behind the bamboo tube).

Polish musician Aga Ujma was a student at the Surakarta Institute of Arts in Indonesia when she first came across the sasando while at a music festival on Bokor island. She fell in love. “When I saw the sasando on stage for the first time, I was so mesmerised by how it looked, even before I heard it,” Ujma says. “But I really loved the sound and I was so lucky, I was staying at the same hostel as the musician, Ganzer Lana. He’s the main sasando guy in Indonesia, and he became my teacher.” She spent her final months in Indonesia studying under Lana, who crafted for Ujma her very own sasando, complete with specific innovations to allow for easy touring. It uses transducers to enable amplification, and can be mounted on a stand to be played sitting on a chair rather than – as traditional – on the floor. Even the sail has been modernised: “For most sasandos, it is always open. But mine folds up. This is a new invention that it folds, to make it easier to transport.” How many other musicians can say their instrument has a giant, telescopic sail?

The sasando has existed on Rote since at least the seventh century. At that time it only had five or eight strings, made from the bamboo stem’s skin, but it now has 32, made of wound metal. Having never played an instrument like it, it took some time for Ujma to become accustomed to the sasando. “It was very painful! Sometimes you play an instrument and you just don’t get it. Every person learns in a different way, but it was so difficult for me. You basically play four different things with two hands.” Around the 360° of strings, the musician plucks a bass pattern with their left fingers, chords with their right fingers and the melody with their thumbs. “My education as a classical pianist was actually really helpful, because it reminded me a lot of playing Bach’s fugues. You have to control so many melodies with just two hands, and that’s the same with sasando.”

Now based in London, Ujma’s music has gone from strength to strength, with Indonesian music playing a vital part. On her 2021 debut EP, Songs of Innocence and Experience, she shows off an undefinable alt-folk with distinct echoes of Björk and Joanna Newsom, and an intimate connection to the sounds of the sasando. As the zither doesn’t use the standard European equal-temperament tuning system, it lends Ujma’s melodies a shimmering, mystical quality.

For an instrument with such a unique construction, an ancient past and a beautiful, unearthly sound, it is tragic that the sasando is so little recognised outside of its own small island. But with the work of Ganzer Lana in Indonesia and Aga Ujma in Europe, more and more people are getting the opportunity to discover it for themselves – from Rote to the world.


Photo: Aga Ujma plays the sasando at the Serpentine Gallery, by Holly Whitaker.

Arushi Jain - Under the Lilac Sky

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 171, October 2021.

Arushi Jain
Under the Lilac Sky
Leaving Records (49 mins)

Arushi Jain is an Indian-born, classically-trained Hindustani singer. She is also a Brooklyn-based modular synthesizer enthusiast. Using these two powerful and personal instruments, Jain’s Under the Lilac Sky is a beautiful ambient marriage of her two homes.

Just as ragas are entwined with a specific time of day or year, this is an album of sunsets. Everything here is consciously liminal: between day and night; between India, the US and somewhere imaginary; between melody, timbre and texture; between voice and synth. Jain’s music is all of them and none of them.

There are no beats here. The whole album feels like an extended alap. Various organic and electronic voices discover sonic possibilities conjured up by complex drones, and in doing so, build vast mystical scapes. The mood is always calm, although it treads a strange line between comforting and unsettling, always in the most evocative way. Echoes of Sheila Chandra bloom throughout as layers of silken sargam overlap upon low, raspy bass – there is a definite retro vibe but one that is distinctly rooted in the 2020s.

It could all very easily have tipped into the perilous realm of New Age, but instead, Jain has made a very impressive album – the perfect soundtrack to a warm, perfumed breeze at sunset.

Badume's Band & Selamnesh Zéméné - Yaho Bele / Say Yeah

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 171, October 2021.

Badume's Band & Selamnesh Zéméné
Yaho Bele / Say Yeah
Innacor Records (46 mins)

Badume’s Band are one of the mainstays of European Ethio-jazz, with over a decade of experience as the go-to backing band for Swinging Addis legends such as Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemayehu Eshèté. Now celebrating their 15th anniversary, the band (in a slimmed-down trio formation) release their long-awaited third album – their first since 2011 and their second spotlighting singer Selamnesh Zéméné.

Unlike the pop star Ethio-jazzers, Selamnesh is from the tradition of the azmari, wandering bards that sing history and political commentary under layers of comedy and poetics. Azmari music has a unique sound, based on the Ethiopian pentatonic kignit scales and distinctive kebero drum rhythms. On Yaho Bele, Badume’s Band give the azmari repertoire a rocky punch without losing any of its unmistakable flavour.

It’s in the slower, bluesier pieces where the whole group shine the most, such as on ‘Ye Ambassel Mare’, where distorted guitar solos over a sparse groove and hints of extended jazz chords while Selamnesh’s powerful voice stretches high above it all. In fact, this new, smaller set-up of Badume’s Band actually allows everyone the space to flourish, still creating rich backdrops for vocal fireworks without it feeling crowded.

Azmari songs with a rock swagger and an Ethio-jazz swing – it certainly is an exciting combination.

Garth Cartwright & Quintina Valero - London’s Record Shops

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 171, October 2021.

Garth Cartwright & Quintina Valero
London’s Record Shops
The History Press (176 pages)

Following on from his 2018 deep dive into the social history of the UK’s record shops, Going on a Song, author and regular Songlines contributor Garth Cartwright has teamed up with photographer Quintina Valero to document the shape of London’s record trade during one of its most uncertain periods.

Cartwright and Valero visited 36 record shops around the capital, grouped into seven distinct neighbourhoods of Soho, Camden, Ladbroke Grove, Brixton, Peckham & Camberwell, Hackney and Whitechapel. Each shop gets its own profile, varying in length from a couple of paragraphs’ description to a detailed chronology and in-depth interview with owners. On top of that, each district is explored in terms of its musical history and legendary record shops and venues sadly lost to the ages.

The lovely thing about the book is that the ‘shop’ aspect of the record shops isn’t the focus. Instead it’s a love letter to the culture of these small shrines to good music, and the passion, knowledge and enthusiasm of the characters that exist within their orbit. The shops and their people reflect all manner of musical styles, subcultures, clientele, ages and opinions, a great snapshot of the huge diversity and all-encompassing nature of London’s musical scene. It also serves as a historical document: the unmistakable shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic looms large over many of the interviews, photographs and stories, very much placing this book in this specific time.

In terms of a ‘coffee table book’, London’s Record Shops ticks all the boxes. It’s full of beautiful, interesting and informative photographs to leaf through at leisure, and the text provides an enjoyable read, even in a dip-in-and-out way. And if you ever find yourself in London with a spare afternoon, it would doubtless serve as an essential guidebook. Just remember to bring your wallet.

Hamdi Benani, Mehdi Haddab & Speed Caravan - Nuba Nova

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 170, August/September 2021.

Hamdi Benani, Mehdi Haddab & Speed Caravan
Nuba Nova
Buda Musique (51 mins)

Medhi Haddab's rai-punk outfit Speed Caravan have somewhat escaped my attention since their brilliant 2008 debut Kalashnik Love, but this album of classical Algerian malouf repertoire with master Hamdi Benani certainly made me prick up my ears. Although renowned as a classical singer and violinist, Benani was always a fearless innovator: the evidence is in the ease at which he twists his two instruments around whatever Speed Caravan throw his way.

The album starts like fairly standard rai fusion, but by the end of the first track it’s already evolved into Maghrebi psytrance led by Haddab’s Frampton-esque oud-vocoder. By then all bets are off. Sometimes there’s a distinctive Tuareg vibe, or a Latin lilt, or a full-on surf-rock growl, but it’s always with an unmistakable Algerian aesthetic, whether in the gasba flutes harking to rai’s origins or even the synths hitting all the tastiest quarter-tones in the maqam. All with that extra bit of punk attitude, of course.

Nuba Nova ended up being Benani’s final project; he died of COVID-19 in September 2020, aged 77. He was respected for pushing the boundaries, and this album does real justice to that legacy – as well as being a proper banger on its own merit.

Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble - Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 170, August/September 2021.

Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble
Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble
Flowfish Records (39 min)

It took the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble until their fifth album and tenth year to go eponymous. It takes time to know thyself, after all, and the Ensemble pretty much have that worked out. In that way, this new album (referred to by those in the know as HCE5) is largely more of the same from them: West African-angled soul-jazz, albeit this time with occasional hip-hop courtesy of guest rapper Synik from Zimbabwe.

Made remotely in Finland and Benin, with band members working out how to use recording software on-the-fly, HCE5 nevertheless sounds as cohesive and polished as if the group were all together in the studio. The resulting Afrosoul is smooth and uplifting – real easy morning Radio 2 vibes – that does slip into cheesiness fairly often. It’s best when they give the sound a bit of an edge, such as on ‘Djogbé Ana Zon’, which nods to modern Afropop alongside xylophones and some shrieking jazz solos; it’s a slightly more challenging listen, and all the more rewarding for it.

Appropriately for a self-titled album, the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble have solidified the sound that they have been working on for the past decade. They stick to what they know, and they do it well.

Spotlight: WOMAD Charlton Park 2021

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 169, July 2021.



Festivals have always been oases of the weird and the extraordinary among a desert of the mundane. But after a year-and-a-half of nothing but weirdness, the pioneering World of Music, Arts and Dance makes its triumphant return to Wiltshire in July, aiming to bring back a little bit of that normality – while remaining as extraordinary as ever.

It’s an understatement to say that festivals have been hit hard over the last 18 months, and WOMAD have had it even worse than most: they’ve seen eight of their festivals across the world cancelled. “The world needs festivals and people need festivals,” says WOMAD’s director Chris Smith. “To have the possibility of actually putting one on is just incredibly exciting because I think we’ve never been more necessary.” Many festivals have resigned to taking 2021 as another fallow year but WOMAD have said from the very start that they will be going ahead. With a whole pandemic’s worth of best laid plans having gone awry, why so certain? “We always believed it would be possible, we’ve been relentlessly positive about that,” Smith says. “I think positivity is more and more an asset that we’re all going to need going forward. And it’s exhausting, I have to say! But I think it’s working, because we’re nearly there.”

While WOMAD is striving to keep things as close to business-as-usual as possible, there have been some unavoidable changes this year. The biggest and most visible is in its line-up. With travel restrictions uncertain and overseas artists possibly facing lengthy quarantines when visiting, the usual globetrotting will be a bit different: “the special thing is that most – or all – of the artists will be UK-based,” explains Smith. “It’s a real celebration of the diversity of the arts and culture in this country that we’ve produced a top line-up of UK-based artists that meets the creative criteria of WOMAD.” It’s certainly impressive – it’s a typically world-spanning feast with huge names such as Anoushka Shankar and Nitin Sawhney alongside plenty of festival favourites and many exciting new discoveries to be made. And while he stays tight-lipped about specifics, Smith hints that there are artists ready to fly in should their respective countries get the green light to travel in time.

Regarding the on-the-ground experience, WOMAD are hoping that everything will look pretty familiar. There will be more room to manoeuvre, more hand-washing points and the like, but a two-metre social distance won’t be mandatory (or particularly feasible in a field of tents). It’s understandable that some will be more nervous than others about rejoining the crowds, so there will also be a new addition to the arena called The Space, a more open area that will host silent discos and other such distanced activities, leaving room to breathe “for those that haven’t quite adjusted yet to full mosh-pit activity.”

So now it’s summer 2021. You’ve made the banana bread, you’ve done the Zoom pub quizzes and you’ve watched Tiger King way too many times. Now it’s time for something different. Enjoy the normality of a typically world-class, globally-musical, relentlessly positive and real, actual, in-the-flesh WOMAD festival – see you there!

Update: WOMAD 2021 ended up getting cancelled about a week after the publication of this article. Let’s try again in 2022!

Photo: Chris Smith at WOMAD, by Elliot Caunce.

Essential 10: WOMAD 2021

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 169, July 2021.

Horace Andy
Dance Hall Style (Wackie’s, 1982)
Every festival needs a bona fide veteran on its line-up, and prolific Jamaican singer Horace Andy definitely fits that bill. He’s probably best known now for his guest spots with Massive Attack, but it’s in the dub-heavy roots reggae and proto-dancehall of Dance Hall Style – Andy’s eighth album – that his distinctive high-pitched voice shines brightest.

The Dhol Foundation
Drum-Believable (Shakti Records, 2005)
Over the years, some artists have become WOMAD mainstays, and Johnny Kalsi and his group The Dhol Foundation can certainly count themselves among that class. Blasting their giant Punjabi dhol drums through bhangra, rock and electronica, they’re a guaranteed party starter – never more so than with their certified banger ‘After the Rain’ with Irish fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt from their second album Drum-Believable.

Li Xiangting & Cheng Yu
The Sound of Silk (ARC Music, 2019)
Pipa (four-stringed lute) and guqin (seven-stringed fretless zither) player Cheng Yu is one of the UK’s foremost Chinese musicians – her album of duets with her mentor Li Xiangting got a five-star review in Songlines. Her quartet Silk Breeze recorded a session of beautiful sizhu music for the WOMAD@Home series last summer, playing among the idyllic surrounds of Real World Studios; they’ll surely bring the same serene atmosphere to Charlton Park in July.

Lokkhi Terra meets Dele Sosimi
Cubafrobeat (Funkiwala Records, 2018)
Two for the price of one here: Lokkhi Terra, the London-based South Asian-flavoured Cuban big band, and Dele Sosimi, Afrobeat keys player and member of the legendary Egypt 80, are both on the line-up for WOMAD this year. Their collaborative album linked Yoruba cultures from both sides of the Atlantic to huge success. Fingers crossed for an on-stage reunion?

Mariza
Concerto em Lisboa (EMI Portugal, 2006)
Portuguese fado, with all its melodramatic flair and delicate, emotional moments, is always most powerful when experienced live, and the modern era’s biggest star is no exception. This live album shows Mariza at her best as a performer, accompanied by the Sinfonietta de Lisboa in front of 25,000 people in fado’s hometown. Granted, she’s not bringing the Sinfonietta to WOMAD, but her voice is an orchestra all on its own.

Onipa
We No Be Machine (IK7 Music, 2020)
Headed by Ghanaian-British singer and rapper K.O.G. and Nubiyan Twist guitarist and producer Tom Excell, Onipa use their hip-hop and jazz pedigree to combine vintage highlife grooves, dirty synths and layers of percussion. This is ‘savannah bass’, Onipa’s own exciting Afrofuturist style, and you couldn’t really wish for a more appropriate festival soundtrack – sound of the summer!

Gwenifer Raymond
Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (Tomkins Square, 2020)
WOMAD has always had a knack for bringing new or lesser-known musicians to the fore, and Gwenifer Raymond may just be your discovery of 2021. Her second album showcases her mastery of the acoustic guitar with a mix of American blues and country roots, folk baroque and subtle influences from India and Wales. Engaging, entrancing and entirely solo – one to watch!

SEED Ensemble
Driftglass (jazz re:freshed, 2019)
Jazz has become a consistent element of the WOMAD line-up in recent editions, and it’s especially prevalent this year. Artists such as Nubiyan Twist, Cinematic Orchestra, The Comet is Coming, Joe Armon-Jones, Sarathy Korwar and Kefaya provide a heterogeneous overview of London’s booming jazz scene and Seed (as they are now known) are sure to be a highlight: their Caribbean and West African-informed 2019 debut earned them a Mercury nomination.

Anoushka Shankar
Reflections (Deutsche Grammophon, 2019)
Shankar’s career has taken so many different directions that you never know quite what she’s going to bring to the stage – the sitarist’s music has encompassed deeply traditional Hindustani classical music as well as Western classical styles, flamenco, jazz, electronica and, most recently, sophisticated and intimate art-pop. This recent self-curated retrospective gives some idea of what to expect from her headline slot this year.

Joseph Tawadros
Betrayal of a Secret Sunflower (JT Records, 2019)
The Egypt-born, Australia-raised and UK-based oud player and composer has graced the stage at WOMADelaide three times and – after a year’s delay – finally makes his UK WOMAD debut. His personality and dress sense are famously extravagant and exquisite, but his most recent album shows that he has no issue making his music serious, subtle, and sublime.

Hailu Mergia & The Walias Band - Tezeta

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 169, July 2021.

Hailu Mergia & The Walias Band
Tezeta
Awesome Tapes from Africa (37 mins)

The Walias Band are a legendary group. On the frontline of the uniquely Ethiopian brand of jazz and soul during the Swinging Addis period in the 60s and 70s and as the backing band for pretty much all the star vocalists of the time, Walias were very much the sound of the city. The group’s first ‘solo’ album (without a guest singer) didn’t come until 1975 and has long been considered a lost treasure among collectors. After a rare copy was tracked down in the Netherlands, a neat remaster makes Tezeta the sixth album (and a fourth reissue) in the on-going relationship between Awesome Tapes from Africa and Walias’ bandleader Hailu Mergia.

Tezeta consists of instrumental covers of some of the era’s most popular songs – plus traditionals such as the title-track – all led by Mergia’s shimmering electric organ. The music is vintage, warm and nostalgia-filled, perfectly suiting the tape hiss that even the most diligent remastering couldn’t hope to remove. Walias’ pleasantly calm pop and light funk has perhaps been overshadowed by the meaner, meatier developments of subsequent Ethio-jazz, but this album stands as testament to a band that created the defining sound of Ethiopian music’s most revered period.

Casey Driessen - Otherlands:ONE

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 168, June 2021.

Casey Driessen
Otherlands:ONE
Red Shoe Records (84 mins)

American fiddler Casey Driessen spent nine months travelling the world, meeting, listening and playing with local musicians until COVID-19 eventually ground everything to a halt. Otherlands:ONE is the result: an album of all-acoustic collaborations with folk musicians from Galicia, Ireland, Scotland, India, Japan and Finland, each recorded on the guests’ home turf.

Although Driessen’s background is in bluegrass, his collaborations here aren’t exactly ‘fusions’ with all the heavy-handedness that term may suggest. It’s a much more sympathetic meeting. Driessen bends his style to that of his hosts, his bluegrass more of a polite suggestion than an imposition.

A lot is explored in the album’s 13 tracks, from the pan-Celtic folk styles of Western Europe to the songs of Baul musicians in Bengal, and even bluegrass itself with mandolinist Taro Inoue in Japan. The sound that binds it all, however, is of musicians really enjoying themselves. You can hear it in the music and the atmosphere, and in the little glimpses of chat we get at the end of each performance – as well as in the perfectly-captured hubbub of a pub session in County Clare.

This is a really lovely album with good vibes aplenty. Hopefully Driessen can get back to globetrotting and collaborating again soon!

Transglobal Underground and Our European Friends - A Gathering of Strangers 2021

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 168, June 2021.

Transglobal Underground and Our European Friends
A Gathering of Strangers 2021
Mule Satellite (47 mins)

A Gathering of Strangers first saw light in 2010 when it was released by a pan-EU collective headed by dubtronic pioneers Transglobal Underground, under the moniker Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe – or UNITE. Now it’s been remastered, remixed and re-released as part of TGU’s ambitious one-album-a-month challenge for 2021.

The project features guests from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ireland and the UK, with stars of folk, hip-hop and electronica all getting involved. This united European front, together with a theme of longing that threads through the whole album, makes this a compelling collection of protest anthems from the resistance, created while Brexit was still the dream of a fringe lunacy.

The strange thing is that a side-by-side comparison with the original isn’t particularly kind on the 2021 edition, soundwise. The 2010 release just feels meatier, its basses more full and its tops more resonant. Add in the fact that the new version has five fewer tracks, it all makes for a rather odd remaster.

Like its source material, A Gathering of Strangers 2021 is still a very good album and a great listen on its own… but it might be best to track down a copy of the original before settling for this update.

Khalab & M’berra Ensemble - M’berra

First published on The Quietus.

Khalab & M’berra Ensemble
M’berra
Real World Records (37 mins)

Real World Records’ latest release harks back to the label’s grand tradition of intercultural collaborative fusion as Italian DJ and producer Raffaele Costantino – better known as Khalab – meets and mingles with the musician residents of the M’berra refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania.

M’berra has existed since the early 1990s, when people fled violence in neighbouring northern Mali. Its population has fluctuated with relative periods of peace and war in the region, but recently there have been as many as 60,000 people living in the desert settlement. Khalab visited M’berra in 2017 to meet its people, record its sounds and, it turns out, to create a 14-strong ensemble of Tuareg and Hassaniyya musicians, playing their own music in their own styles together. Among the musicians are members of groups such as Tartit, Tafalawist and Imarhan Timbuktu – from the population of a refugee camp, a supergroup.

Read the full review over at The Quietus.

The Biram: The World’s Rarest Traditional Musical Instrument?

First published on the British Library Sound and Vision blog.



The focus of this week’s recording is unusual in a few different ways. It’s a recording of the biram, made in the city of N'guigmi in Niger, probably in the mid- to late-80s. The biram is a large boat-shaped arched harp played by the Buduma people, traditionally fishermen and cattle-herders on the shores and islands of Lake Chad. While similar harps are fairly common in Central Africa, the biram is the only one of its type in West Africa, and may have even evolved from an instrument of the Ancient Egyptians.

For most instruments, the relationship between object and operator is simple – one instrument has one player. The biram is not quite so simple. In fact, it has two players, both making a completely different sound.

To read the full blog post and to listen to the recording of Buduma music performed on the biram, head over to the British Library Sound and Vision blog.


Photo: Buduma musicians playing the biram, 1967. Photo courtesy of Guy Immega.

Essential 10: Live Albums

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 167, May 2021.

Nikhil Banerjee
Afternoon Ragas (Raga Records, 1992)
This performance by sitar great Nikhil Banerjee, recorded in a museum in Rotterdam in 1970, is simply supreme. The 10-minute alap on Raga Bhimpalasri that opens the album is surely one of the most transcendent ever put to record. Accompanied by Kanai Dutta on tabla, Banerjee guides us through the serenity and the fireworks of ragas Bhimpilasri and Multani. Forget Rotterdam, this album can take you somewhere else entirely.

Bisserov Sisters
Music from the Pirin Mountains (PAN Records, 1990)
Recorded in concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, the Bisserov Sisters (together with their instrumentalists the Trio Karadzovska) give a whirlwind tour of the many folk styles of the south-western Bulgarian mountain village of Pirin, from the iconic vocal polyphony to all-instrumental dances and lots more in between. Beautifully performed, the resulting 26-track album is interesting and intriguing in equal measure.

Fatoumata Diawara & Roberto Fonseca
At Home: Live in Marciac (Jazz Village, 2015)
Of many attempted African-Latin collaborations, this is among the best. Between Diawara’s breathtaking voice and Fonseca’s nimble Cuban jazz piano, the connection feels completely natural, unforced and personal. Powerful and driving or subtle and sweet, the two masters match each other every step of the way. This recording from the Jazz in Marciac festival remains their only full-length release together.

Oum Kalthoum
Al Atlal (Sono Cairo, 1966)
Oum Kalthoum is one of the world’s bona fide megastars, revered not only in her native Egypt but across the Arab world and far beyond. She was known for her extended live performances, and Al Atlal (The Ruin) consists of a single 48-minute song of melancholy, despair and utter beauty. It is widely considered to be Kalthoum’s greatest achievement, maybe even the greatest Arabic song ever sung.

Ozomatli
Live at the Fillmore (Concord Records, 2005)
How much dancing is your body ready for? Mariachi, cumbia, salsa, norteño, hip-hop, funk, rock, samba and influences from every continent: it’s all here in one band. Ozomatli are one of the greatest of all party bands, known for their on-stage and in-crowd antics as well as their social consciousness. This sweat-soaked CD+DVD set gives a clue as to the dangerously high levels of ecstatic energy they bring.

Radio Tarifa
Fiebre (World Circuit, 2003)
The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa are only 13km apart, but Radio Tarifa’s music makes them feel even closer. Here, Spanish flamenco and Moroccan chaabi become one and the same. This retrospective-in-concert of the group’s first ten years results in a smoldering album that occasionally bursts out into full flamenco flame without ever leaving the souk.

Rachid Taha, Khaled, Faudel
1, 2, 3 Soleils (Barclay France, 1998)
This one-off supergroup show at Paris’ Bercy Stadium by the three biggest voices in rai – the king Khaled, the prince Faudel and the rebel Taha – was always going to be an extravaganza. With a 40-piece orchestra on top of the usual rai ensemble, this 2CD album is cheesy Algerian pop at its best. No wonder they sold out a stadium.

Lobi Traoré
Bamako Nights: Live at Bar Bozo 1995 (Glitterbeat, 2013)
There’s worse places to be than in a small, crowded bar in perhaps the world’s most musical city. Bamako Nights presents one of guitarist Lobi Traoré’s regular all-nighters in the Malian capital’s grungiest bar. Traoré’s electric Bamana blues is sometimes brooding, sometimes roaring, always grooving. And when he goes full-on Hendrix, it seems like Bar Bozo would be the best place on Earth.

Various Artists
Le Festival au Désert (Independent Records, 2003)
The Festival in the Desert is one of those legendary events spoken about in hushed, reverential tones: a stage set up in the village of Essakane in the Sahara desert where local Tuareg musicians rubbed shoulders with Malian giants and international stars, surrounded by camel races and fire dancers. It would sound like fantasy if we didn’t have recorded evidence that it happened.

Various Artists
Music and Rhythm: WOMAD 1982-2007 (WOMAD, 2007)
WOMAD is the standard bearer for world music festivals across the globe, and this 25th anniversary souvenir set tells its story with three CDs and a book. It features rare and wonderful live recordings from throughout the festival’s history, including the very first piece performed at the inaugural event in 1982 – ‘Raindrops Pattering on Banana Leaves’ by the Tianjin Music and Dance Ensemble.

Paul F. Berliner - The Art of Mbira: Musical Inheritance and Legacy

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 167, May 2021.

Paul F. Berliner
The Art of Mbira: Musical Inheritance and Legacy
The University of Chicago Press (608 pages)

At its heart, this book began in 1971, when Paul Berliner first met mbira player Cosmas Magaya and started a life-long friendship. Such a long-standing relationship gives Berliner and Magaya insights into the mbira that can only have developed through decades of deep thought, matured through constant conversation and mediation. Berliner uses Magaya’s performances to explain the intricacies of mbira playing: how pieces are composed and evolve over time; how the rhythms, harmonies, melodies and texture work together to create a complex and unique musical style; how players vary, improvise, create and recreate mbira pieces and parts; and how the tradition is taught and learnt. Magaya’s presence here is all-encompassing and indelible, arguably deserving a co-author’s credit. His death in July 2020, just months after publication, adds a poignancy to his quote in the book’s introduction: ‘Once we’ve completed this study on behalf of our late mbira-playing comrades – leaving it for others who come behind us – I will know that if I die tomorrow, I can go to my grave satisfied.’

This book really is a monster tome, with over 600 (large) pages and 300 musical examples – and on top of that, there’s a whole website with hundreds of recordings cross-referenced with the text, and an even larger companion book, Mbira’s Restless Dance (912 pages!), with over 500 transcriptions of mbira music. It’s a multimedia magnum opus, and it’s a lot to get through.

The Art of Mbira is a landmark work that will be indispensable for scholars of mbira, Zimbabwean music, music pedagogy, music psychology and for ethnomusicologists and musicologists alike; it will also be a boon to budding mbira players. It’s worth bearing in mind though: this isn’t a book for light reading. It can get very technical and, although Berliner has a knack for evocative description, the academic discussion can be dry verging on impassable. This is an incredible book, and the culmination of two lifetimes of work, but proceed with caution.

4 Mars - Super Somali Sounds from the Gulf of Tadjoura

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 167, May 2021.

4 Mars
Super Somali Sounds from the Gulf of Tadjoura
Ostinato Records (73 mins)

As part of their on-going relationship with Radiodiffusion-Télévision de Djibouti, Ostinato Records launch the first instalment of their new Djibouti Archives releases to bring the country’s unique sounds to international ears for the first time.

The series starts with 4 Mars, the official band of the People’s Rally for Progress, Djibouti’s ruling party since independence. You’d be forgiven for thinking that their music would be stuffy and bureaucratic, but these recordings – made between 1982 and 1994 – can hold their own among the best of African rare groove.

Amid their drum machines, horn sections, synthesizers, electric guitars and array of impressive vocalists, 4 Mars strike at something that represents the essence of their country, where tradition and internationalism are equally important. The musics of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt loom large, and from the other side of the Red Sea, they take elements from Yemen, Turkey and India. They add in reggae, funk and jazz from across the Atlantic, and filter it into their own sound to create something still recognisably Somali in its loping beat and vocal melodies and rhythms. It’s a definitively Djiboutian mix.

At their height, 4 Mars were a 40-strong troupe of musicians, singers, actors, dancers and folklorists designed to show Djibouti in the best possible light. Now they get another chance to shine.

Stella Chiweshe - Ambuya!

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 167, May 2021.

Stella Chiweshe
Ambuya!
Piranha Records (55 mins)

Piranha Records have delved into their archives, looked in the ‘1987’ box and recovered the record that started it all for them: the Queen of Mbira Stella Chiweshe’s – and Piranha’s – very first international release. Now they celebrate the record’s 33⅓ anniversary with a nicely polished remaster.

Ambuya! is a warm set of traditional and composed Shona songs on mbira, two marimbas and hosho (shakers) straight from Zimbabwe, with the bass guitar, drum kit and mixing-deskery of British world-musical japesters 3 Mustaphas 3. There’s a lovely mix of solemnity and bounce through the whole thing, especially in the opener ‘Chachimurenga’ – Chiweshe’s most famous piece home and abroad, an implausibly catchy song about the horrors of war.

This reissue also features four extra tracks, taken from Chiweshe’s 1988 Peel Session. Handily, there are no duplications with the original tracks, and the sound is consistent enough with the rest of the album so as not to feel tacked on. Maybe some of the more gung-ho production effects haven’t aged as well as the album’s other elements over more than three decades, but all in all, it’s a lovely album and a welcome reissue of an early-days world music classic.

The Invisible Session - Echoes of Africa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 167, May 2021.

The Invisible Session
Echoes of Africa
Space Echo Records (48 mins)

The Invisible Session’s debut album came out in 2006 and now, just 15 years later, the follow-up is hot on its heels.

The group is based around the core collaboration between producer and vibraphonist Luciano Cantone and multi-instrumentalist Gianluca Petrella, expanded to feature band members and guests from Italy, Finland, Ethiopia, the US and Gambia. And their mission statement is clear right from the beginning: this is Afrobeat meets Ethio-jazz. The group occupy that midpoint between Fela Kuti and Mulatu Astatke. The footprints of the two giants are everywhere on this album, which is none the worse for it. Yoruba rhythms drive on swirling dub-style Habesha atmospheres; chunky horn sections blast between Nigeria and Ethiopia in their melodies. Other styles sneak in there occasionally: there are moments when it bursts through into full-frontal jazz, there’s fleeting flavours of hip-hop production, and Benjamin ‘Bentality’ Paavilainen’s half-spoken poetry is a treat in the two tracks he’s featured on, sparking inescapable comparisons to Gil Scott-Heron.

Ethio-Afrobeat is not exactly untrod ground, but The Invisible Session do it as well as any I’ve heard. All that’s needed now is for them to step from under the Kuti-Astatke shadows and make the sound unmistakably their own.